Cast Your Burdens Upon The Lord

Well, as we grow as believers, as we know more and more the whole of Scripture, we find different passages that we are equipped with to apply to people in situations when we're counseling them, right? You don't even know what situation someone's facing and they pour out their guts to you and you're trying to think, where would I go in the Bible? Where would I go in the Scriptures? And so that's kind of how I ended up in Psalm 55, was a situation this week, someone in a whole other church situation, not a part of this church, this context, they had called for counsel, and a fellow pastor had left the church. They were just in a really hard spot. And I was sitting on the phone thinking, where could I go with some truth to someone who feels incredibly discouraged in the midst of an intimate friend abandoning the situation that they were in? And I ended up in Psalm 55.

So turn to Psalm 55. We're going to consider this Psalm of David. Let's pray.

Father, thank You. Thank You. Thank You, Lord, for Your mercy towards us today.

Lord, thank You for Your Word. Your Word is truly sufficient. We're thankful for such a canon of truth that points us to Your character, that points us to different aspects of who You are.

Lord, we're thankful that in the days that passed, the prophet spoke, but now You've spoken to us through Your Son. Lord, we're thankful to have such a sure Word. Lord, we're thankful to have truth that is going to sanctify us.

Lord, we're thankful that we have truth to run to to destroy lies that come at our mind that are not according to the knowledge of Christ. And Lord, we do want to take every thought captive and bring it in obedience to Christ. Lord, we're always looking to take prisoners.

We want to take prisoners with thoughts that don't belong in our minds, that are not according to the knowledge of God. Lord, we want to arrest them. We want to execute those thoughts.

We want to get rid of them. Lord, that we would be renewing our mind more and more and becoming more and more like Your Son. And so, Father, I just pray You'd help right now in this time together.

In Christ's name, Amen. Well, I'm going to kind of paraphrase this psalm, and then we're going to read this psalm. But imagine a king.

You're a king. You're this individual. You're a king fleeing from your throne.

And why is this happening? Why do you have to flee? Well, one of your own sons has led a mutiny to take over your kingdom. And that's hard enough, right? Added to this, your most trusted counselor turns against you, and they rally an army to hunt you down. And could it get worse? So you've got bonds that you thought these are unbreakable bonds, and they're just being shattered right in front of your eyes.

And while escaping, you're tired. You're worn out. Someone comes to you.

They say, you've got to keep going. If you stay here tonight, you're going to die. You've got to keep going.

And an image flashes through your mind possibly at that moment. And you're remembering this great counselor of yours and the great conversations you had, and now you picture them talking to your son, leading this mutiny, planning how to kill you. Right? I mean, imagine being in such a situation.

In the midst of it, you pray, Lord, confuse their speech. Turn this counsel to foolishness. Because you know, the only way you will make it, the only way you will survive is the divine hand of God in this situation.

And to add on top of all of this, all of this is happening and it actually has part to do with your own sin. Which is incredible that despite the fact that your own sin has led to some of these circumstances, you're still going to the Lord. And then you get word.

You hear. You know that God has heard you. That there's been a victory.

And so that's kind of what we're about to read in this psalm here. That's kind of a paraphrase of what David went through. And you could make it your own.

I was researching Psalm 55 and I found someone actually redid the entire psalm to their friend who was in the stock market. Here, what is this called? For a defeated Chicago merchant. For a defeated Chicago merchant.

He made it his own. He put himself in this situation. And so you could do that in some way.

You could put your own circumstances here and ask yourself, do I respond as David does? Right here in Psalm 55. So let's read Psalm 55 so we can learn what lessons did David learn and record right here. And have I learned those lessons when I'm facing a great trial that's crushing me? Now, I'm going to make a few running comments as we read Psalm 55.

I believe Psalm 55, as much as I can tell, is written at a time when Absalom led this mutiny, took over the throne, and Ahithophel, David's counselor, I believe that's who he's referring to here. I'm going to mention some thoughts on why I think that is. It can't be 100%, but to me that seems to fit when he was recording all of this in his life.

So let's read Psalm 55. To the choir master with stringed instruments, a masculine of David, give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not Yourself from my plea for mercy. Attend to me and answer me.

I am restless in my complaint, and I moan. Because of the noise of the enemy, because of the oppression of the wicked, for they drop trouble upon me, and in anger they bear a grudge against me. My heart is in anguish within me.

Tears of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me." Have you ever felt like that? Horror. Tears of death.

Anguish. Noise of the enemy. And this is how David thinks.

This is verse 6. And I say, so he's saying to himself, here a possible solution is in his mind. Oh, that I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and be at rest.

Yes, I would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness. I would hurry to find a shelter from the raging wind and the tempest.

Destroy, O Lord, divide their tons. So he's moving on from this thought of flying away. Destroy, O Lord, divide their tons, for I see violence and strife in the city.

That right there mirrors 2 Samuel 15. You had this strife, this violence in the city. What was one of the things Ahithophel even said? He told Absalom to lay with David's wives on the roof.

Incredible. Verse 10, day and night they go around it on its walls, and iniquity and trouble are within it. Ruin is in its midst.

Oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace. Psalm 55, verse 12. For it is not an enemy who taunts me.

And look what David says. Then I could bear it. It's not an adversary who deals insolently with me.

Then I could hide from him. But it's you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. So this reveals this wasn't an enemy of David's.

It was someone who was a close counselor of David. Not a foe. Verse 14, he goes on to talk about this relationship.

This is why I think this is Ahithophel. We used to take sweet counsel together. Within God's house, we walked in the throne.

You have that in 2 Samuel 15. He was David's counselor. Verse 15, now look at what David actually asked here, and we actually see this led to Ahithophel's death.

Verse 15, let death steal over them. Let them go down to Sheol alive, for evil is in their dwelling place and in their heart. And he goes on.

Verse 15, the Targum is an ancient Aramaic translation. And you know what it actually says? When you actually read that, it actually words it this way. Let death seize upon Ahithophel.

So the Targum actually puts in Ahithophel's name. And so for centuries, it says Ahithophel and his companions. And how did Ahithophel die? He died by suicide.

Death stole over him. It goes on to say he didn't live out half his days. Verse 16, but in contrast, David says, I call to God, the Lord will save me.

And look what David does. Evening and morning and at noon, I utter my complaint and I moan. And he hears my voice.

He redeems my soul in safety from the battle that I wage. For many are arrayed against me. God will give ear and humble them.

He who is enthroned from of old, because they do not change and do not fear God. My companion stretched out his hand against his friends. He violated his covenant.

Again, that just sounds like this is Ahithophel. He's someone who has a covenant with David to the king. And now he's stretching out his hand against this very one who he's committed to serve.

Verse 21, his speech was smooth as butter. Yet war was in his heart, which is what you find with Ahithophel. This plan to go and kill David.

David in the weakness is going to be discouraged. He's going to be worn out. He's going to stop.

They're going to overtake him. They're going to kill him. And the counselors are coming to David saying, no, you got to keep going.

Because they know they're going to be after you. Ahithophel is going to counsel them in this way, which is exactly what happened. Verse 21 again, his speech was smooth as butter.

You and I can have smooth speech, and yet what be in our heart? War be in our heart. That's a terrifying reality. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords.

And then David, it seems he says this to himself. Verse 22, it's either him writing after the fact and he's saying the lesson he learned and he's calling you and I to do this. It could be what he's doing in verse 22.

Or it's actually David, he's speaking to himself, like in Psalm 42 and other psalms where they speak to themselves. Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved.

But you, O God, will cast them down into the pit of destruction. Men of blood and treachery shall not live out half their days, but I will trust in you. And Ahithophel did not live out half his days.

He went home after his counsel was ignored. He got his house in order and he went and he hung himself. And David says, but I will trust in you.

So this is what David was facing. Whether it was Ahithophel or not, I think it was Ahithophel and that whole situation in 2 Samuel when Absalom's mutiny was happening. Whether you could perfectly prove that or not, you see what David's facing here.

This is a hard trial that David is facing and we see how David is wrestling through this and ultimately where he finds refuge here. And so, rather than ask yourself, well, how would you respond if you were in David's situation? We should actually ask the question, how did David respond? Forget how you and I would respond. What is the right response if I've got all of these factors coming together in my life and I'm facing such a weighty trial in a situation here as David did? And we saw one of David's main takeaways in verse 22.

David teaches in Psalm 55 a crucial spiritual discipline, the release of your burdens by faith to God. Have you learned that spiritual discipline? It's loud. The release of your burdens.

The mixer was wanting to release all that sound that was getting in the amplifiers over there. It had to bust forth, I guess. Have you learned this spiritual discipline? It's a spiritual discipline.

Because what happens, the more you release your burdens to the Lord by faith, the more consistent, the more you face a trial and right away you're taking this burden to the Lord. We don't want to miss this. If this is when David had Absalom's mutiny and it is when Ahithophel, his counselor, was turning on him, don't miss the fact that David is casting his burdens on the Lord even though his sin, his adultery with Bathsheba, all of that sin leading up to this is part of why all of this is even happening in the first place.

And yet that is not preventing David from going to the Lord. So if you're here today and you're thinking, I can't cast my burden on the Lord because part of the burden I'm facing is because of sin has led me into this situation, that's a lie from the enemy, go to the Lord. Whether sin is part of why where you're at is where you're at or not, go to the Lord with your burden.

He is able to sustain you. This psalm cries out against any sort of self-sufficiency. It's crying out, God alone is sufficient and able to bear your burden.

This psalm cries out, there's no burden that's too big for the Lord. This psalm cries out that the Lord is always available. You've got to go to Him.

Obviously, this psalm no doubt points to the greatest burden bearer, the Lord Jesus Christ. Did the Lord Jesus Christ have a sweet companion? A treasurer? One who managed the money among the disciples? Judas Iscariot? Who betrayed Christ even with a kiss? And yet the Lord Jesus Christ faced the cross for the joy that was set before Him. And as you're reminded of the Gospel and Christ in this psalm, remember this, brother, sister, if Christ bore the wrath of God, the greatest burden you and I want to get rid of is God's indignation that was hovering over us.

How could He not bear something far less significant than the very wrath of God? So I want to consider five things. Number one, three ways we mistakenly want to respond in a trial. Number two, how we should view our trials as divine assignments.

And number three, what is actually promised in verse 22? What's it actually promising? In point four, how do I cast my burdens on the Lord? It can be a great cliché, a great statement, you know, how do you do it? If you can answer the how. And the fifth thing I want to look at is two ways that what does it not mean to cast your burdens on the Lord? Because you might be saying, well, I did cast my burden on the Lord, and I've not found this promise to be true. Well, obviously the fault's not with the promise, it's with the one trying to apply the promise.

So let me pray again. Lord, I just ask, Lord, I want to cast my burden of this message upon You right now and just ask for Your help and clarity of thought and mind. And Lord, You're able to take something, even from a flawed messenger, and apply it to one of Your dear ones in a very specific way that they need.

And so Lord, I pray that You would do that for Your precious sheep's sake. In Christ's name, Amen. Amen.

So number one, three ways we mistakenly want to respond in a trial. Have you ever wrongly responded in a trial? Yeah, we all have done that. Well, first, what I call, David, the first example of a wrong response is found right there in verse 6. Verse 6, Whore is overwhelming him and he says, Oh, that I had wings like a dove.

There's a famous painting that you find online of David sitting on the balcony like this, looking depressed, and he's looking at a dove flying away. You know, the artist is trying to depict that. Can this, you know, 200 pound David sprout wings and fly out of the castle walls and go away? He can't.

He can't. Now, Ahithophel tried to go away through suicide. That was a foolish option, self-murder.

But he says, Oh, that I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and be at rest. So he says, There's rest somewhere.

I want rest. How do I get to it? I can't get rest in my circumstances. I've got to get out of my circumstances and go fly away somewhere.

Was that God's answer to David? Get out of your circumstances and somehow that's how you're going to obtain rest? No, that's not how the Lord works. He says four times here, I would fly, I would wonder, I would lodge, I would hurry. If I just had one thing, wings.

Just give me some wings. And I would, you know, what's the one saying for the one airline? Want to get away. Is that Southwest Airlines? Yeah.

Well, I mean, that's the idea. You can fly, you can literally get away. That's what criminals do, right? They've got to get out of this country, get a fake passport, whatever.

And if they fly, they get enough distance away from where their warrant is at. In a way, this is kind of a self... Some of us might struggle with self-pity. You feel self-pity coming on and you just want to escape.

You want to escape. If I could just remove myself from the circumstances. Conrad Merle, he said, do you have a little rabbit in your blood? Has anyone tried to hunt a rabbit here? I've tried to hunt a rabbit.

I've yet to kill a rabbit. Why is it difficult for me to kill a rabbit? Do the rabbits ever stay still? I mean, it's like you've got to get them looking eaten to be able to get a shot in. If they know they're hopping around, they've got a little rabbit in them.

Or they are a rabbit. Conrad says, as soon as trouble pops up, do you want to run from it? Trouble is not a call to move on. Right? But that's one way we look at our trials.

There's trouble. I better move on. I better fly away.

That crosses David's mind. We might think at the first sign of the conflict, we assume leaving is the best solution. What happens though if you leave when you're facing a trial and you don't endure in that trial? What are you taking with you when you leave? What's still coming with you? Yeah, the heart problem in your heart.

You still have that, right? Whatever refining God meant to do in your life by putting you in the furnace, by getting out of the furnace, you might not be burning in the furnace now, but guess what's not burning as well? The dross. The dross is still stuck on you. You know, in this whole situation, as David's walking, as they're leaving, someone's even throwing curses at him from the mountain, right? And they're saying, do you want us to go kill this man? And David says, no, no, no, if it's from the Lord.

David knew in his life there's discipline from his father because of his sin. And he needed to endure that. And so that's the first way we might wrongly respond in a trial.

Rather than seeing fly, fly away, we should sing, here I stand, Lord, help me. Here I stand, help me. We need to get, you know, David says, I would, I would, I would, I would.

You see that right there. I would fly, I would wander, I would lodge, I would hurry. You've got to get the I woulds out of your vocabulary.

If it's not an option or it shouldn't be an option, we're getting it out of the spreadsheet as we're weighing out what our options are in this current situation. So second mistaken way to respond to the trial, we find in verse 12. Look at verse 12.

I call this a mistaken way of thinking right here. I think this is what's happening. This is how it strikes me as I've read it over the years.

Here David is pouring out his heart. We're getting a view into his heart. And he says in verse 12, For it's not an enemy who taunts me.

And look what he says. Then I could bear it. Isn't that interesting? What's David doing? He's kind of ranking his trials of, well, these are trials I could bear.

Okay, what makes this not a trial I can bear is that it's an intimate friend who's betrayed me. If it was an enemy, then I could bear under this. Well, what's the fault in that? Who else in the Bible ever made some sort of statement like, well, you know, I'll never deny the Lord.

I'm never going to fall into that. I mean, it's Peter. Peter had an overconfidence.

The truth is you and I can't bear any trial without the Lord. As much as I might need God's grace when an intimate friend betrays me, I need God's grace when enemies come upon me as well. But here David said, then I could bear it.

It's not an adversary who deals insolently with me. Then I could hide from him. And that is practically true.

If it was an actual enemy trying to kill you, not this mutiny, then you could just hide in your castle wall. But he says in verse 13, it's you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. And then he thinks about this history here.

You ever had that happen? You're in a trial. And you look and there's one aspect you'd like to tweak. If I could just alter this one aspect of the trial, I'd be able to bear myself in the midst of the trial.

When you give in to that thought, you're now making your trial seem like it's unique to where maybe there isn't hope to be sustained in the midst of the trial. You're making it some sort of unique situation that, you know, maybe God is not sufficient to help me in the midst of that. You're thinking about the what-ifs.

Does it help when you're in a trial to think about what-if? What if the trial was like this? No, that's not a helpful thing to do. On the opposite side of that, of wanting to tweak the trial, what's another problem some of us run into when we're in a trial? We imagine all the trials that we could face. We're in a trial that's not that bad, and we start to give in to our mind.

We think, well, what if I face this trial? What if I have to face the trial of the death of one of my kids? Is that helpful for me to meditate on that? You know, Jeff Peterson faced that trial. What if I've got to face that trial? What if? You know, as they say, does God give grace for the what-ifs? He doesn't. He doesn't give the grace for the what-ifs.

He gives grace for what we're actually facing. Edward Payson, he said, anticipated sorrows are harder to bear than real sorrows. I mean, you might be here today in anguish this morning based on an anticipated sorrow.

It's got nothing to do with reality. You're anticipating something that might happen or it might never happen, and you're bearing sorrow this morning, and you're praying to the Lord, Lord, help me bear this burden, and you're not feeling like the Lord's helping you because the help is found, and stop meditating on this anticipated sorrow and live in today. Isn't that what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount? We have enough to worry about today.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow. So anticipated sorrows are harder to bear than real ones, Payson says, because Christ will not support you under anticipated sorrows. So don't anticipate some sorrow in your life that you might face.

Don't think about the what-ifs. Don't try to rank everything. Well, if this was changed, then I could bear it.

The Lord can sustain you in any trial no matter how brutal it is. He can absolutely sustain you in that. Well, a third mistaken way to respond in a trial is you freeze up.

You become paralyzed by fear. Look at verse 5 in Psalm 55. David says, Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me.

And He doesn't just stay stagnant. That's what leads him into saying, oh, that I had wings like a dove, I would fly away. But I take from that, it made me think of what happens to some of us.

We freeze in the midst of a trial. We get absolutely paralyzed by fear. Instead of calling out to God, we panic.

Maybe, possibly, this is what happened to David as they were fleeing in 2 Samuel 17. It says the messengers came to David at the fords of the wilderness to bring him a report. And they had to tell him, arise, let's keep on going.

Some believe that indicates David was not wanting to keep on going. And they had to urge him on. He was freezing up, possibly, in the midst of this escape because he was so laid down with the sorrow.

You can have that happen. You're so burdened by the sorrow, you just don't want to move. Recently, we interviewed Mack Tomlinson on Monday, last Monday, about this whole period of 10-12 months of darkness he had.

And it's something Mack said in that interview, for 10 months, he didn't even go to church. He doesn't even remember going to church one time. And I'm sitting there hearing all this, how could you even get in a place where you don't go to church even one time? He had insomnia, he couldn't get any sleep.

You're so physically drained. You're so spiritually drained. You have all these lies.

You're so discouraged. You could just freeze up and shrink. We need to be the opposite.

We need to be like Norman Dutch Cota was on Omaha Beach on D-Day. It's recorded they were all chest deep in the water. He grabbed a helmet.

He turned to his stunned soldiers. And he shouted to them, he said, gentlemen, we're being killed on the beaches. Let us go inland and be killed there.

Right? It's like we're all going to die right here just sitting on the beaches. We're all getting gunned down anyways. Let's go and get killed a little closer to the enemy.

His fierce command jolted them out of their paralysis. You got any paralysis in your spouse that's trying to jolt you out of that paralysis? Trying to get you to go on a little? That was one of the things Max shared in that interview. He got great help by going to Louisiana and the counsel Mark LaCour gave, but prior to that trip, Max said he didn't even want to go.

And he told his wife he wasn't going to go on the trip and then Max had hit him. If I stay here, I'm going to be miserable. So why not at least go there and be miserable? I mean, that's kind of what Norman Cota thought.

I'm going to die in the water. I might as well die at least getting a shot in. So, I don't know, what three of these mistakes you could make a bigger list do you often default to the most? Do you freeze up when you're facing a trial? Do you think about if I could just change this one aspect and you try to play the part of God and alter something or think about the what-ifs? Or do you have a little rabbit in you and you just want to get out? It's too hard to bear.

I don't want to even face any of this. So those are three possible ways. Well, point number two, what are we actually promised if we cast our burden on the Lord? Look at v. 22 in Psalm 55.

Cast your burden on the Lord and He will... There's two He wills here. Cast your burden on the Lord. He will sustain you.

What's the second one? He will never permit the righteous to be moved. And then he contrasts that. But you, O God, will cast them down.

So we cast our burden on the Lord and the Lord is casting them down into the pit of destruction. So yeah, we've got two promises. Number one, let's think of this.

He will sustain you. Okay, I need to understand what's being promised because if I go and I cast my burden on the Lord and I have a wrong expectation of what the promise actually means, then what's going to happen? I'm going to be discouraged and think God didn't keep His Word. So I need to understand, how is the medicine supposed to work? If I think it's just a cure-all right away when you go in and you get your first chemotherapy and the cancer's gone, you're going to be really disappointed when it's not gone.

So, same thing with biblical promises. If we don't understand them right, for example, those who embrace perfectionism. It's amazing, the one person I know who embraces that in another situation, they will not apologize to their children for anger, impatience, or anything because their doctrine wrongly informs them they can't even sin.

You know, they've deluded themselves with their false teaching. So what is this promise? If I'm going to go cast my burden on the Lord and it says He will sustain you, what should I actually expect? Well, the Hebrew word here is to support, it's to nourish, it's to hold up. It literally means to measure out sufficient provision.

So it means to measure out sufficient provision. It implies that God will uphold you with adequate strength and nourish you physically and spiritually while you're still in the trial. Right? Is this a promise to be taken out of the trial? It's not.

It's not. It's a promise to be sustained while you're in the midst of it. We find the same word in Genesis 50.

Joseph, he uses the verb, he says, I will sustain, that is provide for you and your little ones. Right, and what happened? They had to keep going to Joseph to get food to survive in the famine. Right, the promise wasn't instantaneous wealth and the famine is gone.

The promise was to be sustained while in the famine. We find the same Hebrew word in Psalm 33. He kept them alive, that's the word sustain, in the famine.

He kept them alive. Jim, that's an intense ringtone there. He kept them alive in the famine.

He doesn't take them out of the famine. He's sustaining them while they're in the famine. So you got that? If you cast your burden on the Lord, he's not saying he's going to completely remove the burden.

He's going to sustain you in the midst of what you're facing. And there's people that will literally say, I cast my burden on the Lord, it didn't work. They had a false expectation.

They thought it meant instantaneous deliverance. Sometimes it does. Sometimes God does instantly deliver.

I'm not saying that doesn't happen. John Newton had this great statement. He says, I compare the troubles which we've had to undergo in the course of the year to a great bundle of sticks.

And he said the great bundle, it's too large for you to carry all at once. Unless you're Evan or something. No, not even Evan.

But God doesn't require us to carry the whole bundle at once. And Newton says this, he mercifully unties the bundle. He gives us the first stick, which we're to carry today.

And then another, which we're to carry tomorrow. And then so forth. So God's already got the whole bundle, it's unrolled.

And what stick are you on today? The Lord's given you a certain stick. And Newton, he says this, we can easily manage our troubles if we would only carry the trouble appointed for each day. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burdens over again today.

And then add the burden of tomorrow to the weight before we're required to bear it. So that begs the question, are any of you carrying any sticks that were from yesterday? Are any of you carrying any sticks that you're supposed to get tomorrow? Right, so Vess, you know, you're doing transportation. If Vess loaded up all of his orders for two weeks of transportation, would that all fit inside of your van? It wouldn't fit inside, I don't think it would fit inside of his van.

He's going to weigh the van down. What's Vess got to do? He's got an order today for sure thing delivery. And he goes and he gets that order and then he does the next order the next day.

How many times are you thinking about the orders you had from yesterday? You know, did you go back to the person? You know, is your order okay? And I want to put it back in my van again. And I want to drive around one more time and drop that couch off at your house one more time. Is that what we do? That's exactly what we can do in the spiritual realm.

And so Newton's right. Part of the reason some might be overwhelmed is you're trying to carry a stick that should have been left yesterday. You're trying to carry a stick that you got to bear tomorrow.

And so sustain means the Lord will give you adequate provision for today. No wonder the Lord's prayer, give us this day, right? It's not a mystery. The second aspect of what's being promised here is the promise in verse 22, cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you.

He doesn't qualify what kind of burden and narrow it down to only specific sorts of burdens. It's wide open, brethren. It's wide open.

Yes, it might not be the thing we want to talk about every prayer meeting is, you know, Aunt Tilda's big toe that's broken. But brethren, God does care about Aunt Tilda's big toe. God cares about all these other things that are more severe than that.

Everything is to be taken to the Lord. Well, what are we being promised here in verse 22? The next thing, the next He will, it says He will never permit the righteous to be moved. What's that mean? I think that's the most confusing statement in the text.

It's not confusing. The hardest to understand. And here's how I was wrestling with this.

Listen, listen to how the literal version renders this. The L-I-T-V. Listen to this.

He does not allow forever the moving of the righteous. That's interesting. Okay, the ESV, He will never permit the righteous to be moved.

The literal, He does not allow forever the moving of the righteous. Notice the difference? I mean, when you read the ESV, He will never permit the righteous to be moved. Well, you ask, we'll move from what? Obviously, David is being moved in a physical sense.

So you naturally take it away. He must mean move from the one place you don't want to get moved from, and that is the Lord. So in the midst of all the trials, the one place I don't want to get moved from is from my confidence and trust in the Lord.

And that's what the enemy wants me to do is to not trust the Lord. But then you read the L-I-T-V. He does not allow forever the moving of the righteous.

Well, what's that sound like? That sounds like a promise that what you're in the midst of won't last forever. That He's saying He will sustain you and He will not let this go on forever and ever. So that's how some take it.

As David is saying, this shaking will not remain permanently. Now, what's one of the problems with that? Are there certain trials you're in that will be permanent in this life? Absolutely, right? There are certain people that have physical trials. Unless God heals you, you're going to have that physical trial the rest of your life until you get a glorified body.

So I think ultimately, even if you take it to be He does not allow forever the moving of the righteous, meaning that the trial is not going to be permanent, that there's going to be an end in sight, ultimately, either way, when is this end in sight for you and I as Christians? Well, Hebrews 12 speaks about it. Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable... There is a spiritual kingdom, there is a heavenly kingdom that can't be shaken. Is everything in this earth going to move? Yeah, even the mountains might be moved into the depths of the sea.

Something as drastic as that could happen. And so, all that to say, the second aspect of the promise, He will never permit the righteous to be moved. I just take that to simply mean you're casting this burden on the Lord and He's sustaining you, and He's sustaining you, and you know as He sustains you, there's confidence that it will be an ongoing sustaining that will not go away, and that as He sustains you in the midst of it, you're going to keep believing the Lord, you're going to make it to the end, you're going to endure it to the end, you're not going to abandon Christ, He's not going to abandon you, He who began a good work is going to bring it to completion, that sort of idea.

In Jude, you're going to be kept by the power of God. And so that's how I interpret that second aspect of this promise. He's going to give you all the food and all the spiritual supplies, that's He will sustain you, and He'll never permit you to be moved, that is moved to destruction.

Because look at verse 23. What's the contrast? You, O God, cast them down into the pit of destruction. Isn't your greatest fear should be abandoning the Lord and losing your soul and be cast into hell? And that should be one of the fears of the Christian.

I don't want to go down that path. David says, you know what? If you cast your burden on the Lord, He's going to keep you. You're not going to get cast down into the pit of destruction if you cast your burdens upon the Lord.

Well, a third point. How should we view trials? How should we view trials? Now, look at verse 22. I'm sorry to bring up the literal translation two times, but it matters with this text.

Look at verse 22. Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you. Okay, listen to this in the literal.

I remember seeing this years ago. And it makes sense. It's very much according to the whole of Scripture.

Cast on Jehovah that which He hath given thee. You hear that? Cast on the Lord that which He has given thee. Right? The ESV.

Cast your burdens on the Lord and He will sustain you. What's the literal? What nuance does the LITV focus in on that's happening here? Where did the burden come from? The Lord. And what's a New Testament text that makes it really, really clear in a similar way? Philippians 1. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in Him, but it's also been gifted to you that you should what? Suffer for His namesake.

You're engaged in the same type of conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. And so that idea is very much a biblical idea. It helps for us to realize this.

How should I view my trial? How should I view my burden? It's a divine assignment. Well, let's use the whole John Newton illustration. The stick.

The stick God gives you today is a divine assignment. You want to take that stick and you want to handle it correctly, and then the next day, you get another divine assignment. You're basically returning to the Lord what He's entrusted to you.

That's a comforting reality. If you can believe in the sovereignty of God and that He brings trials and sufferings into your life, if you don't want to believe that, you're not going to find any comfort in this. Without believing the sovereignty of God, we would be miserable, miserable people.

So you know what you're doing? When God gives you a burden, and He actually wants you to take that burden back to Him, by taking it back to Him, it's actually a form of worship. You're worshiping the Lord by acknowledging as you take that burden back to Him that it's from Him and He is sufficient and able to bear that burden for you. If you don't take that burden to the Lord, you're actually not worshiping Him.

You're insulting Him by implying He's insufficient for the task. Even worse, you could be implying by your own self-sufficiency that you've got it all together, which is an act of pride. John Calvin, he noticed that the Hebrew noun in Psalm 55 can mean both burden and gift, allotment, apportion.

It's the same kind of sense in Philippians 1. That double sense produces what sounds like a contradiction. Throw the very thing God just handed you back to Him. Right? Throw the very thing God just handed you, throw it back to Him.

I don't know of a good way to illustrate that. I could carry my water bottle to the car, but I give it to the little two-year-old and have them carry the bottle to the car, and then they give it to me when we get to the car. I'm training my two-year-old, even though they end up giving back the very thing I gave them.

I mean, the Lord is not wrong to do that for us. He has some purpose for us to learn. Well, that brings up this question, how do I cast my burden on the Lord? And if David is saying this to himself, verse 22, cast your burden on the Lord, as some take it, he's actually speaking to himself.

Others say this is his exhortation to his readers that he's exhorting you to cast, and that what he's done throughout the psalm is an example of casting. So if that's the case, you could learn what it means to cast by looking at the psalm. At the same time, what you don't want to do is complicate what it means to cast your burden on the Lord.

I mean, what does it mean to cast your burden on the Lord? What's the simple answer? You cry out to Him in desperate faith, Lord, help me, I can't handle this. That's not that complicated, right? You don't want to create some formula. But here are some aspects we see that David does.

David is honest in this psalm. If you're not honest with the Lord, if you're not bearing everything to Him in all honesty, then you're not being genuine. So be honest.

Number one, be honest. You want to cast your burden to the Lord? Don't conceal how you feel. Lord, I want to have wings and fly away.

Lord, the fact that it's this friend who is a sweet counselor that's really eating my guts out right now. I mean, you bear that. Yes, you preach to your own soul.

If that's David saying, cast thy burden, you tell yourself that. Why are you bearing this burden? James, cast it on the Lord. Go to the Lord.

Well, then how do I cast it? Well, look at verse 17. Notice what David does. "'Evening and morning and at noon, I utter my complaint and moan, and He hears my voice.'" You know what? That is habitual communion and prayer to the Lord.

You're constantly throughout the day praying. And he's mentioning those three times of prayer that the Jews might have had, but his point is this whole time under the burden, he's going to the Lord. He's casting this to the Lord.

He's asking for help. So, just based on the word sustain, we know that how do you cast your burden on the Lord? It's an ongoing, active surrender. This is not a one-time cast.

Right? Praying morning, noon, and evening is an ongoing casting your burdens on the Lord. George Muller, he was asked how he could handle so many anxious moments in the orphanage. You know what he said? He said, I rolled 60 things on the Lord today.

How many things have you already rolled on the Lord today? You're probably not counting, but imagine if you counted that. What if we actually journaled? I had that burden right there when I woke up, and I cast that on the Lord. You had a list.

Imagine who would win? Who would get the most burdens cast on the Lord in a day? 200, 300, 1,000? How do you cast your burden on the Lord? There's a New Testament author who quotes this passage in the New Testament. And he mentions something very specific that I think is important when we ask the question of how. And that's Peter.

Peter takes this same promise and applies it in the New Testament to a church who's facing trials and suffering, and he's showing them if God upheld David in the midst of these trials that he is facing, in his darkest hour, that same shepherd will uphold you. And Peter is bringing that out to them in 1 Peter 5. But what does Peter say before he says to cast all your anxieties upon the Lord, for He cares for you? What does he call the people to do? What does he say? Humble yourself. That's not, that's not, I mean, David is humbling himself in Psalm 55, but he doesn't say it the way Peter does.

So Peter brings this into the New. And his whole thing to think about prior to you casting is you're humbling yourself. That means pride prevents you and I from casting our burdens on the Lord.

There's a massive issue of pride that can prevent us from going to the Lord, not humbling ourselves under the Lord. You know, I don't need Him, or here a subtle type of pride is, well, the Lord doesn't care about that burden, so I can't go to Him. How is that? That is false humility.

Anytime you want to put yourself in a place where you have a pity party and you say, I'm a unique person and no one else has ever suffered what I've suffered, that in itself is a sin to be repented of. That very mindset is exalting self, that you're this unique person, and then it's, well, now that I'm unique, God's ability cannot extend to me because I'm a unique type of person. That is a sinful way.

That is not humbling yourself. That's not humbling yourself before God. So, fifthly, what casting your burden is not? What is it not? Well, first, and we've already seen this, it's not merely setting it down temporarily.

A 19th century preacher, he compared it to a traveler who instead of merely setting down his pack at his feet during prayer, you know, this guy, he wouldn't just set his pack down when they came to pray. He actually went to the bridge and he flung his burden into the flowing river never to pick it up again. Right, there's a big difference.

Right, you could be here today, you could be even hearing this verse and you go home later tonight and you cast that burden on the Lord. Lord, help me. And you go away, you don't fling it into the river and you come back later and you pick that burden right back up and you stop going to the Lord for help.

And then you wonder, well, why did his promise work? Because it's not a temporary, it's an ongoing weakness, humble asking of the Lord, Lord, help me. A second thing, what casting your burden on the Lord is not, it's not you trying to help the Lord, help the Lord carry the load. And again, George Muller gave a great example of this.

He tells of a boy in an American city who, let me just explain it. So the boy has this big burden and a cart's coming along and he hops on the cart. And he's got this big burden and he sets the burden on the cart that he's on.

And he's noticing the horse is getting kind of tired. So you know what the boy thinks to himself? He thinks, well, I want to help the horse out. So you know how he helped the horse out? He took the burden off the cart that he's still on and he put it back on his back.

And the boy thought, I'm helping the horse. Well, where was all the weight unless there's some aspect of engineering, I don't understand. I mean, where was the weight all still transferring? The pack is still on the boy who's still on the cart and all the weight is still going on the cart.

You and I can do the same thing. You know, we cast something on the Lord. We're near the Lord.

And so we assume, well, I'm near the Lord. I'm near the church. I'm near the brethren.

My burden must be upon the Lord. But we're actually standing right there on the cart, still bearing it on our back. Don't try to help the Lord.

We can copy that folly in many ways. We can clutch our worries as tightly as ever, even though we're right there in the presence of the cart. And rather than let the Lord bear the whole load, we're still trying to bear it while on the cart.

Just leave it on the cart and sit down and rest and trust that the Lord can sustain it. Well, just in closing here, again, remember the Lord Jesus Christ. You always want to think about Christ and Him crucified.

And as I mentioned at the beginning, I mean, there are things here that point to the Lord, His sufferings, His betrayal at the hands of Judas. And you think about in Gethsemane, Jesus cast His distress on the Father and angels were sent to strengthen Him. Even the Lord had a burden to cast to the Father and help came to strengthen Him in the midst of what He was facing.

And even there, the disciples with the Lord at the right place, but not doing the right thing, not praying to the Lord, falling asleep. He said, don't do that, lest you fall into temptation. And they did fall into temptation.

They denied the Lord. Christ did not flee the storm. He didn't call down legions of angels to rescue Him.

He went into the trial, into the sufferings predetermined and He bore the wrath of God for you and I. He was crushed and He rose from the dead. Yet, in a way, He even felt it like David. Father, if possible, remove this cup.

Is there something? Even the Lord made a statement like that. Definitely shows His humanity. And so you might be here today wanting wings right now.

You might be wanting the cup to be gone. But you see in Christ, He was sustained even with the most, there's not going to be a greater trial any one of us are ever going to face. You're never going to top suffering the very wrath of God.

Unless you're lost, you will top that. You will match it in hell under His wrath forever. Don't go to hell.

Don't go to hell when there's a Christ who says in Matthew 11, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. We got a Christ who wants us to take our burdens to Him. We've got a Christ who's ever ready.

We've got a Christ in Luke 22 who's praying for us that our faith not fail. So are you being broken by a burden this morning? Be honest with yourself like David was. Is there some burden that's crushing you? This Psalm assures you it does not have to happen.

There is sustaining power available for you. The burden does not have to crush you. No matter what it is.

Are you here this morning wasting energy dwelling on what you could do if this could change or that could change? We've got to put that away. Spurgeon, he said, as soon as trouble comes, quick, the first thing, tell it to your Father. I see you staggering beneath a weight which He would not feel.

What seems a crushing burden to you would be nothing to Him. It would be but a bit of dust to Him. See the Almighty bends His shoulders.

He says, here, put your troubles upon Me. I mean, why deny that? The heaviest weight is but dust to the Lord. Lastly, Edward Payson, praying Payson, he said this, to anyone who's suffering in body, mind, or finances, anyone whose hopes have been crushed by loss or disappointment, anyone grieving at the grave of a loved one, Christ says, give Me your burdens and I will hold you up.

Call on Me now when you are in trouble and I will answer you. You've seen that friends and family die. Come to Me and find a friend who never dies and will never leave you in life or in death.

You've seen earthly treasures vanish. Come to Me and I will give you riches that last forever and make you heirs of heaven. Don't keep spending your money on things that don't satisfy or your effort on things that bring no lasting good.

Listen to My call. Come to Me here and your soul will live. I will make an everlasting promise with you the sure kindness I promised to David.

So yeah, at the end of the days, when we sing the song, what a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and cares to bear. What's the next line? If I'm remembering it right.

Peace we often forfeit. Why? Because God was insufficient for the trial and refused to bear the burden. Isn't that what it says? No, because we didn't take it to Him in prayer.

Name one trial, one burden you took to the Lord and He turned you away. Anyone have one? I'd like to hear about it. I'd like to hear what was so big, so hard, that our God couldn't help you.

Anyone got something? No one ever has in the history of the world. No one's ever been able to come up with one thing that was too big for the Lord. Let's pray.

Father, we are incredibly grateful. I hope, I trust we want a greater gratefulness in our heart that You say to us, cast our burdens upon You. Lord, I pray You would be sustaining.

Lord, there are people in burdens right now and they're praying morning, noon, and night. Lord, sustain them. Your Word says You will.

You will provide them daily in the midst of the famine. Lord, do that for them, please. And Lord, we don't want to be moved from You.

We don't want to believe lies of the enemy. Lord, I pray You'd help us be a people, a weaker people, a people more dependent on You, a people who are not full of self-sufficiency. Lord, I pray for those who don't know You that they would take the burden of their sin to You and find rest for their soul.

Lord, I pray You'd help brethren in trials that they can't express or articulate right now. Lord, I pray today You'd even give them clarity like You did to Mac after 10 months. Give them clarity on how to even express whatever it is they're going through that they might have truths to kill the lies.

Lord, You're able to bring about such deliverances in those who are struggling. So Lord, we need You. We look to You.

We cast ourselves upon You. Oh Lord, we dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. Lord, I thank You for Your many promises.

Lord, that we can cast all our anxieties, all of our burdens upon You, because You care for us. Lord, I think of the joy Peter had in writing those words to these believers who are suffering, to emphasize to them the care of God. Lord, we're thankful we see Your care for David.

Lord, we're thankful of Your care for David even in the midst of his own sin. His own sin bringing about various trials he faced. And You still showed him mercy in spite of the fact his own sin, his own adultery, were to Hithophel's granddaughter, Bathsheba, her husband David, having him killed.

Lord, we could understand in some way Hithophel's anger in David's sin, and yet You were still merciful to David. And Hithophel's sin was not justifiable. His response.

Lord, we just thank You. We thank You for Your mercy, Lord. It is beyond what we can even comprehend.

Help us, we pray in Christ's name, Amen.